This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference. Either the page is no longer relevant, or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. If you want to revive discussion regarding the subject, you should seek broader input via a forum such as the Village pump.
Participate in the discussion on the project's talk page
Use the Toolserver if you have an account and analyse the existing data.
Before we can change the account creation process, we need to know what to change. That's why we're doing research. Together, we'll test different account creation pages, compare our experience with other top websites, ask new users for their opinion, and work to increase new user participation after account creation.
Research projects:
The project has started by posting a survey on several Wikipedia's MediaWiki:Welcomecreation pages, which appears after a user creates their account, asking them why they joined. Our first survey's results have been posted at this page.
How many people click on "create user account" and don't follow through?edit
From September 22 on, we're logging user clicks on the Wikimedia logging server to get a daily "account abandonment". We turned on clicktracking for the "Create account" page. We measure how many people land on this page and how many of those actually fill out all the information and click on the "Create account" button.
After running the clicktracking for about 6 hours on September 22, we estimate that about 21% of users follow through the current account creation process. This is for all languages and all Wikimedia projects. More data and project breakdowns to follow.
How many people create a user account in a given month?edit
The following data has been extracted from the Wikimedia Toolserver.[1] All data is for August 2010:
Project
Number of new user accounts overall
New user accounts: average per day
English Wikipedia
169,706
5,474
Spanish Wikipedia
27,102
874
German Wikipedia
17,963
579
French Wikipedia
16,712
539
Russian Wikipedia
12,653
408
Dutch Wikipedia
5,743
185
Polish Wikipedia
5,393
174
Swedish Wikipedia
3,992
129
English Wikinews
2,801
90
Czech Wikipedia
2,686
87
Hungarian Wikipedia
2,602
84
Hindi Wikipedia
1,293
42
Tamil Wikipedia
807
26
Bengali Wikipedia
677
22
Malayalam Wikipedia
616
20
How many of these new user accounts are being used for editing?edit
The following data has been extracted from the Wikimedia Toolserver.[2] All data is for August 2010:
Project
Number of new user accounts
New accounts with at least one edit within the first 10 days after creation
Percent- age
English Wikipedia
169,706
51,864
31%
Spanish Wikipedia
27,102
6,769
25%
German Wikipedia
17,963
6,221
34%
Russian Wikipedia
12,653
3,335
26%
Dutch Wikipedia
5,743
1,413
24%
Polish Wikipedia
5,393
1,255
23%
Swedish Wikipedia
3,992
1,190
30%
English Wikinews
2,801
2,798
100%
Hindi Wikipedia
1,293
121
9%
Tamil Wikipedia
807
82
10%
Bengali Wikipedia
677
74
11%
Malayalam Wikipedia
616
70
11%
How many new users make their first edit on the day of account creation?edit
The following data has been extracted from the Wikimedia Toolserver.[3] All data is for August 1–15, 2010 (smaller sample than above):
Project
New accounts with at least one edit within the first 10 days after creation
New accounts with at least one edit on the day of account creation
Percent- age
English Wikipedia
24,881
22,885
92%
Spanish Wikipedia
3,396
3,022
89%
German Wikipedia
2,894
2,617
90%
Russian Wikipedia
1,515
1,332
88%
English Wikinews
1,336
1,336
100%
Swedish Wikipedia
548
510
93%
Hindi Wikipedia
50
41
88%
Tamil Wikipedia
34
30
87%
How many new users edit their user page at least once shortly after account creation?edit
The following data has been extracted from the Wikimedia Toolserver.[4] All data is for August 1–15, 2010 (smaller sample than above):
Project
New accounts with at least one edit within the first 10 days after creation
New users who edit their user page at least once on day 1
Percent- age
New users who edit their user page at least once within the first 10 days
↑select DAY(user_registration) as day, count(user_id) from user where user_registration IS NOT NULL AND user_registration>"20100800000000" AND user_registration<"20100900000000" group by day;
↑SELECT COUNT(*) FROM (select DISTINCT user.user_id from user left JOIN user_daily_contribs ON user.user_id=user_daily_contribs.user_id where user_registration IS NOT NULL AND user_registration>"20100801000000" AND user_registration<"20100802000000" AND day>="2010-08-01" AND day<"2010-08-12") as dummy;
↑SELECT COUNT(*) FROM (select DISTINCT user.user_id from user left JOIN user_daily_contribs ON user.user_id=user_daily_contribs.user_id where user_registration IS NOT NULL AND user_registration>"20100801000000" AND user_registration<"20100802000000" AND day="2010-08-01") as dummy;
↑SELECT user_name, COUNT(*) FROM user, page, revision WHERE page_namespace=2 AND page_title=user_name AND rev_page=page_id AND rev_timestamp < '20100802000000' AND user_registration IS NOT NULL AND user_registration >= '20100801000000' AND user_registration < '20100802000000' GROUP BY user_name; and SELECT user_name, COUNT(*) FROM user, page, revision WHERE page_namespace=2 AND page_title=user_name AND rev_page=page_id AND rev_timestamp < '20100811000000' AND user_registration IS NOT NULL AND user_registration >= '20100801000000' AND user_registration < '20100802000000' GROUP BY user_name;
